An academic goes to high school
How I approach activism and teaching (hint: they’re the same thing)
In this post: I talk about the struggle of distance learning during the pandemic, its weird silver lining, and the reality of my students' lives during the pandemic. Dr. Allison writes, in lieu of the (almost) one-year anniversary of when COVID took over the United States.
Next week: I am becoming increasingly convinced that the Civil Rights movement did not have the transformative change that some think it did. Dr. Allison Harbin writes about investing in the complex progression of higher and secondary education since the 1970s.
Dear friends and fam,
As we inch closer and closer to the one year anniversary of the world shutting down, I’m finding myself living in the memories of teaching in the moments leading up to the lock down, and then during it via “distance learning” (that phrase irritates me, it’s just so obnoxious, ed speak is so inane).
I remember the encroaching sense of doom as I took three different trains on my commute from Brooklyn to Jersey City. I remember my school’s faculty bathroom not having a functioning faucet. I remember the exact time that I learned my students had not had any soap to wash their hands with for a month. This is not an exception to the rule, this is what urban schools are. They were in no way prepared to safely educate students with a deadly and highly contagious virus racing through the population.
Exactly this time last year, I started noticing when students coughed, sneezed, and then went about the daily task of learning-- sharing chromebooks, passing around sheets of paper and pens. I tried not to flinch when a student came in for a hug. Oh, how I would come to miss these brief moments with students, sandwiched between running back and forth from the teacher’s lounge to make copies for a class that began in ten minutes, teaching, and trying (but usually failing) to get some lesson planning or grading done during the day.
Just as my former school was not prepared to possibly have hygienic learning, they were similarly ill-equipped for distance ‘learning.’ I’m putting quotes around that because I’m fairly sure that no learning happened, despite my exhausting best efforts. As ambulance sirens filled my ears with their nonstop screams, I did my best to teach writing online. I gave writing prompts geared towards the pandemic, my favorite one was when I asked them to write a letter to the thing(s) they could no longer do because of the pandemic.
And here’s the weird silver lining of distance ‘learning,’ I could read my students writing the same day they wrote it and return it back to them with feedback. I organized my assignments around themes of socio-emotional coping skills, fantasy short stories (to get them to escape our dismal reality if only for a bit), and journal entries. I learned more about my students, and I saw nearly instant improvement in their writing skills as I churned out feedback as if I were a machine.
But I couldn’t change the cruel reality that my students’ lives and their futures were irreparably changed from the consequences of the pandemic. 40% of my students lost a family member to covid-19 within the first month of distance learning. I discovered this when I created a Google survey about how the virus had impacted my students. When I saw the results, everything I knew about being a ‘good’ teacher flew out the window. My students were in crisis, and often had no adult other than their stressed out parents they were trapped in their homes with to talk to (here is a great guide from the APA on handling students in crisis, I wish I had had it a year ago). By the time the end of June arrived to mercifully put all of us out of our misery (students and teachers alike), I was burned out. And exhausted.
Nevertheless, with the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, I was out in the streets. I was also thinking about how to put to use my only skills (writing and teaching) to make my own humble contribution to making Black Lives Matter.
Many (white) folks seem to think that there is nothing they, as an individual can do. Sometimes it’s as simple as donating money, but it’s also about more than that. I realized anti-racism is a way of life, a way of engaging with the world, and most of all, a way of engaging with yourself. If you want to “do something,” to combat the individual and systemic racism that is alive and thriving since Trump, think about what your skill sets are-- what are you best at? How can you use that to further the cause?
What I’m reading this week:
As I delve deeper and deeper into the financial realities of charter schools, the more I’m absolutely disgusted. Here’s a great short read, aptly titled “How to Profit from Your Nonprofit Charter School” introducing why we should all be worried about how charter schools spend our tax money, because as it stands right now, there is scant oversight and hardly any way to hold charters accountable for their finances. This means that charter school founders can (and do) pocket money, use it to push forward recruiting students or make shady real estate investments, rather than paying quality teachers etc. I also read about how charter schools capitalize on the concept of white saviors that does far more damage than you may think.. Yeah, that documentary Waiting for Superman was literally all lies. Eyeroll.
For more on white saviors and other advice to white teachers in urban schools, I highly recommend Christopher Emdin’s book For White Folk Who Teach in the Hood, but here’s a good article by him about the savior complex.
More reads on charter schools:
The 5 Most Serious Charter School Scandals in 2019, by Valerie Strauss Washington Post. Jan 27, 2020
How investors and developers use properties to cash in on NJ charter school growth, by Jean Rimbach and Abbott Koloff, North Jersey Record. March 27, 2019
What the public isn’t told about high-performing charter schools in Arizona, by Valerie Strauss, March 30, 2017
Are Expulsions Really Driving Charter Success? Center for Education Reform.
Until next week,
Allison
NSFS: Not Safe for School, your snark-filled antidote to racism and corruption in education. Follow @postphdtheblog on Twitter and @allisonharbin_postphd on Instagram
Other posts about Activism in Education:
What the Republicans have used to fear-monger and rabble-rouse whites naturally signals what I’d like to take as a moment of hope for the U.S: the more we educate all people, most especially Black and peoples of color, the brighter our collective futures will be.